I like Ivans official eris 1.0 as well. It has some of the bloatware removed. I am fairly new to this as well. This is my third rom. I agee with cableguynoe. I was scared to try anything with my phone but it is not to bad. So far I have tried an earlier version of Ivans official eris as well as his 1.0. I tried the new plain jane 2 but found I had issues trying to overclock and it seemed to drain my battery. I have not had these issues with Ivans 1.0. Good luck.

i like zen something sorry i think it is zenxp but just drew a blank.. it is in the list of roms for eris on xda. currently i am stuck on aloysius 2.0v12 and it is really cool and i like it alot! uses sense like launcher with all sense widgets and if you want lwp then you can easily use jcase's fix and works perfectly with no lag oc'ed at 710/480

Haha, cableguy is right, you have to try them all before you can decide what's right for you.

Ivan's 1.0 is definitely a great ROM to start with (and was the first ROM I flashed after rooting). You can download ADW Launcher from the Market onto any ROM you use, so that shouldn't be a problem. All ROMs (as far as I've seen) will sync with Google, although you may need to flash an additional zip file that contains all of the Google apps when you're using a Cyanogen ROM (such as White Widow).

As far as Facebook sync goes, you should be able to find away to get it done on most ROMs. If you're going to use ADW Launcher, I don't think you'll be able to use Facebook for HTC Sense (which is how the stock ROM syncs your Facebook contacts). I could be wrong about that - I know that you definitely can't use it on non-sense ROMs, but I'm not sure if it will still work on a Sense-based ROM that's using a different launcher. Either way, the Facebook for Android app can also sync contacts.

But really, the only way to find the perfect ROM for you is to try as many as you can. Eventually, you'll find something that looks and acts like you want it to.